Donald Maier Gallery

Donald Maier Gallery

Donald Maier graduated from the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts, in Newark, New Jersey in 1968. He won several state and local show awards in the early seventies, including 1st place in oils at the Garden State Art Center in 1971, 1st place for Watercolor at the Red Bank Festival of Arts in 1972 and an Honorable Mention in the Emerging Artists exhibit at Rutgers University in 1973. He had numerous one-man shows in both New Jersey, California and Georgia and has exhibited in many fine galleries in California, Scottsdale, Arizona, Santa Fe, New Mexico and Georgia.

As a young man, Don was inspired by Winslow Homer, and one of his first watercolor trips was to his home state of Maine. He remember waiting for over an hour for the paper to dry as he tried to paint on the foggy coastline. Another favorite artist was Fredrick Remington, inspiring his interest in western landscape and the desert.

Don enjoys working in Watercolor, Oils and Pastel. He thinks the changing back and forth has a positive effect on his work and mental state. One can get burnt out after a while. You notice the number of good pieces to bad ratio change for the worse. He found that switching mediums is a good way to break that trend and get a fresh breath of energy to move him along.

He recently did a series of American Wildlife for a one man show in 2012. He did them all in oils, many very large as 40"x60". This was during the heat of the Georgian summer, down in the coolness of his studio. Now, in the cool winter weather, Don draw small pastels of everyday scenes in his truck. He needed to restrict himself to the lower elevations in recent years due to COPD which makes it hard to breath in the upper elevations. Because of this, Don has decided, after a lifetime of painting the beautiful places from nature, to switch and do the opposite. He started focusing on the everyday urban setting, complete with the cars and streets we see everyday. Even the billboards and telephone lines are part of his art now. He was pleasantly surprised how much fun he was having doing these new subjects. He now sees potential art everywhere and it is liberating. In the spring, he will most likely switch to watercolor to capture the flowering trees.

Don is going to keep on painting until he can't hold a brush any longer.